


Heart In Darkness: A Mandalorian FanFiction Story

by jhanlinjr87



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Battle of Endor (Star Wars), Dewback, Imperial Sentinel Shuttle, M/M, Niima Outpost, Other, Planet Jakku (Star Wars), Planet Nevarro (Star Wars), Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Planet Yavin 4 (Star Wars), Post-Battle of Endor (Star Wars), Probe droid, Razorcrest, Unkar Plutt - Freeform, hyperspace, sabaac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27223492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jhanlinjr87/pseuds/jhanlinjr87
Summary: A few years before The Child, the Mandalorian Din Djarin, in need of a job, accepts an offer from a questionable source to partner on a trip to an obscure Outer Rim planet, in search of a rumored large amount of black market Imperial weapons. What he and his companion discover, though, is something even the Empire couldn't stop...
Relationships: Din Djarin/Greef Karga, Din Djarin/Original Male Character(s), Din Djarin/Reader
Kudos: 6





	Heart In Darkness: A Mandalorian FanFiction Story

In a dark, dense starfield, the Razorcrest pulls out of hyperspace and into the Nevarro system. With the planet in his full view, the Mandalorian Din Djarin sets his coordinates for landing, just as a hologram of Greef Karga appears next to him.  
“Mando, are you on your way back?” he asks.  
“Yes. I’ve just arrived in the system, so I’ll be touching down soon,” he replies, as he makes his final preparations to land. He didn’t expect what was said next.  
“Well, listen. I’m not on Nevarro right now. I jumped over to Tatooine to take care of some business, and it looks like I’m going to be here a little while longer…you know how that goes.”  
“What do you mean? I’m ready to deliver, you know how this goes.”  
“I know, I know. I didn’t want to leave you out to dry, so I have a proxy waiting for you in my stead. He’ll pay you and take the quarry off of your hands, just like we always do.” Greef sounded confident in his plan, if not unapologetic.  
“Who’s going to be there?”  
“Apak Skør-Faa. I think you know him, yeah?”  
“Yes,” he replied with indifference. That satisfied Greef.  
“Good. Safe landing and have a drink on me!” he said, promptly ending the conversation and dropping out.  
“This should be interesting,” Djarin sighed as he steered the ship toward the planet’s surface.

After docking in the shipyard, he walked slowly into the city. The streets were a bit busy, but nothing out of the ordinary. As he approached the cantina, though, he noticed the bustling of a few people in the middle of the street. They were hovering over two lifeless bodies, one on his back and the other face down in the dirt. As he walked by, observing the scene, he noticed that the body lying face-up had a fresh blaster wound in the chest, and the one face down had a wound in the middle of its back. He watched as people carried the bodies away, down a side street and out of sight. As he approached the bar’s entrance, he made sure he had his blaster secure and at the ready, just in case. 

He walked into the bar and looked around for his contact. The place wasn’t busy; he saw the usual faces, just fewer of them. After a moment, his attention was caught by a human figure at the far side of the bar, waving to him to come over to his booth. He recognized Apak, held up a hand in acknowledgement, and walked over to the booth, glancing around and getting a read on the place. Greef could’ve picked a worse choice as proxy, but he was still keeping his guard up, and sat at the booth facing the bar and entrance, so he had a view of everything. The scavenger Apak, looking older than he probably was, didn’t stand out in a crowd; he wore plain clothes, an aged Alliance hat that he didn’t earn fighting in the wars, and a blaster that looked old but no doubt was still reliable.  
He enthusiastically greeted Djarin as they sat down.  
“It’s been a while, Mando! You want a drink?”  
“No, I’m fine.”  
“Keeping busy, I hear.”  
“A little,” Djarin replied, and got right to business, putting his bounty’s FOB onto the table. “Do you have my money?”  
Apak wasn’t surprised at the lack of pleasantries.  
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”  
He picked up the FOB and put a pile of credits on the table, which fell over in front of the Mandalorian, and after quickly counting them he placed them in a pocket on his belt.  
“Is there another FOB for me?” he sharply asked, even though he had a feeling what the answer would be.  
“You know, there isn’t. Greef didn’t have anything for me to give you before he left for Tatooine. Things are a bit slow for him right now, I guess.”  
“Not for you, it seems. Was that your handiwork I walked by, outside in the street?”  
He saw that Apak wasn’t expecting this question, but a smile ran across his face in delight of a Mandalorian asking about his actions.  
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it was. Apparently, some people don’t like the way I play Sabaac, so they followed me into the street afterward, as I was making my way over here, and wanted to settle up with their blasters, right then and there. What can I say, they started it and I finished it.”  
Mando kept prodding him.  
“I also couldn’t help but notice that one of them was shot in the back. Not very sporting of you, Apak.”  
“Well,” he defensively replied, “when someone aims their blaster at me, I tend to start shooting, and sometimes I’m a bit erratic and others get hit that maybe shouldn’t have…but if he didn’t want to be shot, he shouldn’t have been in the street.”  
“That might not wok out for you, one day.”  
Apak changed the subject.  
“Did Greef tell you why he couldn’t be here, by the way?” Apak asked, giggling to himself.  
“No” was all the Mandalorian said.  
“The idiot - he fell off of a dewback he was inexplicably riding when it got scared by a scurrier, and ended up dislocating a couple of things, so now he’s stuck in Anchorhead and can’t travel for a few days.”  
The glee Apak took in telling him this was annoying, and Mando was ready to leave, even though he had nowhere to go.  
“Well, if we’re finished here, I’ve got carbonite to unload.” He began to get out of the booth.  
“Wait, wait. Don’t leave just yet,” Apak said, lowering his voice and reaching out to stop him. He looked around the bar, seeing that there wasn’t anyone near them.  
“There is one thing I wanted to talk to you about. A side job of sorts, if you’re interested?”  
Mando, to his own chagrin, was interested, and sat back down.

Apak took a swig of his drink and began his pitch, with a story.  
“Listen, years ago, after the Battle of Yavin, the Empire sent thousands of probes out into the galaxy, searching for the rebels’ new hidden base, which they eventually found in the Hoth system. Meanwhile, all of these other probes were landing in other systems, and one of them ended up in a system called Ve’sara. It’s barely inside the Outer Rim – at the rim of the Rim, so to speak, close to the edge of the Wild Space. And its probe droid sends back evidence of an uncharted settlement, one that looks to be a mining colony. I know, another mining colony, right? But when the Empire received the information, it somehow deduced that the colony had discovered another source of kyber crystals, and immediately sent a garrison out to the system to “investigate.” Now, this all happened just before the Battle of Endor, and when the Empire was defeated there, the garrison apparently deserted the settlement and fled the system. They didn’t even find kyber crystals there, anyway; it turned out to be a mineral mining colony that was just refining one of the planet’s resources to power their own machinery for local farming purposes. But when the garrison fled, they left everything they had brought with them behind – everything. All of their weapons, Mando. Since the war ended, the black market value of all of that Imperial surplus has done nothing but skyrocket, and it’s just waiting on that planet to be claimed.”  
He leans back in his seat and motions “me and you” with his hand, and just sits there, grinning at the Mandalorian.  
“Where did you get this information?”  
“The last scav job I was on; my crew and I were caught, bound and detained, and, well, let’s just say that I’m the only one who came back alive, and only after getting the story and info out of a poor soul who was going to die, anyway. It wasn’t enough to save its life, but the haul might be enough to save my hide.”  
This was the nefarious side of Apak that he didn’t trust. “How’d you escape?”  
“By doing this.” Apak held up his left hand, and proceeded to twist his thumb into his palm while snapping his wrist at an awkward angle, making a subtle “clicking” noise that was one of the most unnatural sounds that the Mandalorian had ever heard.  
“And the hand slides right out of the binders. Freedom.” He smiled with pride, putting his joints back into place.  
Mando thought for a moment, and asked, “Who else have you told about the job?”  
“Just you and I know. Don’t want too many gundarks in the nest, if you know what I mean,” he said, wryly.  
“I get it,” Mando returned.  
Mando himself leaned back and mulled over the plan.  
“The only thing the Imps might’ve left behind would be battle droids to stand guard over everything, but that is highly unlikely, I’m thinking,” Apak went on. “But even so, they’ll be no match for the likes of us, or the ship I got to take us there.”  
“What do you have?”  
Apak became giddier.  
“I have an Imperial Sentinel Shuttle. A classic!”  
Mando was still skeptical.  
“Will it be enough to handle the haul?”  
“Hell yeah! With the passengers seats removed, it’ll carry 180 tons of whatever; we’ll be fine. She’s got weapons, to boot, so any droid trouble, shouldn’t be.”  
Again, he smiled with all the confidence in the galaxy, which never made the Mandalorian confident, but Apak was right that the weapons could bring them both a hefty financial windfall.  
“What’s the cut after we sell everything?”  
That was what Apak wanted to hear.  
“Yes! I’m thinking 70/30.”  
Mando laughed at the thought.  
“50/50.”  
“What?! It’s my damn job, Mando!” he barked back at him, and gathering some unwanted attention from the others in the bar. He paused for a moment. “60/40. That’s more than fair,” he countered.  
Mando knew it was, he just wanted to get a reaction out of the scavenger.  
“Alright, I’m in.” 

After completing the process of handing over the last quarry, preparing their ship and taking off from Nevarro was uneventful, which was fine with the Mandalorian. And Apak was right; with the passenger seats removed, there should be plenty of room for a decent amount of whatever surplus was left behind on the planet. He also deduced that Apak recruited him for more than one reason: the ship needed at least two people to fly it, he needed a second person for the heavy lifting, and an extra gun was always helpful when heading blind into a situation such as the one in front of them. So, as Apak flew the ship out of the system, he put the coordinates he was given for the Ve’sara system into the Sentinel’s navacomputer, and prepared the ship for the jump into hyperspace.  
With lightspeed achieved, the Mandalorian felt he had time to just sit in the cockpit and rest up a little, but Apak was too excited to sit in silence.  
“What do you think you’ll do with your share, Mando?”  
“I haven’t thought that far ahead, yet.”  
Apak sat back and looked out at the light show in front him. “I owe a few people some money, and once they’re paid off, I’m going to find me a nice Octuvian to hang out with for a little while.”  
The thought of that amused the Mandalorian.  
“How would you get one? Through the Hutts??” he asked, genuinely not knowing.  
“Yeah. It would be a tricky and expensive proposition, but having all of those loving arms wrapped around me would be worth it.”  
Mando felt he had to keep going. “You’ll pay off the trouble you’re in now only to risk getting into more of it by doing business with the Hutts…doesn’t sound very smart, to me. Or safe.”  
Apak got up from his chair and headed out of the cockpit.  
“If you say so, Mando. All I know is, if I want something, I go after it, and I just hope something tries to get in my way. Let me know when we’re approaching Ve’sara. I’ll be in the back.”  
And with that, he left the Mandalorian to himself at the controls, who knew he was going to have to be careful with this guy. Successfully finding and taking an Imperial weapons surplus was inviting, and quite possibly lucrative, but he would have to watch his back after the job was done.

Cutting to sub-light engines, the Sentinel pulled out of hyperspace into the Ve’sara system. The planet itself was smaller than the two travellers expected, appearing as a bland sphere floating in the middle of deep space.  
Apak observed, “Look at that: no green, no blue, no white. Just a lot of…blah.”  
He moved his hands over the ship’s controls.  
“Alright, locking in on the garrison’s coordinates, and I am getting a power source reading around the same area. It’s weak, but it’s the only one I’m seeing for pretty much the whole planet. That’s really odd.”  
The Mandalorian did his own checking on his side.  
“I’m seeing minimal life form readings. Extremely minimal.”  
In his experience, strange and out of the ordinary discoveries like these were cause for concern, but the other side of that is there seems to be not much of anything down there, so maybe they made the trip out here for nothing. That observation didn’t faze Apak. “Let’s get down there and see what we find. I’m betting the Imps came all the way out here, saw there was nothing to gain, then dropped everything and evacuated as soon as they found out the Emperor was done for.”  
Mando wasn’t so sure that’s exactly what happened.  
“But where are the original mining colonists? Where are the planet’s indigenous life forms? There are no readings at all, I think that could be an ominous sign.”  
“An ominous sign of what? Apak snapped back. “Who cares? That’s even better for us. The fewer living things we have to deal with down there, the better. Let’s stop worrying and land this baby. The sooner we get down there, the sooner we leave and find a buyer for our spoils.”  
Mando felt it was useless to argue with him at this point, so he steered the ship in accordance with the guidance system’s directions, leading them to the garrison’s settlement, but he had a bad feeling about this place.

They dropped down through the cloudy atmosphere, and headed across the continent toward the outpost’s location.  
Apak muttered, “This place reminds me a little of Mimban, only without the fog. Ever been there?”  
The Mandalorian was barely listening to him, focusing more on the planet’s barren and ugly landscape. “Mimban…no.”  
“Yeah, well, you’re not missing much, obviously.”  
The Location Alert signal on the ship’s control panel began to blink red as a loud ring sounded. Apak couldn’t turn it off fast enough.  
“Alright, alright! I guess we’re approaching the outpost.”  
The ship flew closer to the ground, and they both could better see the conditions of the environment. All of the vegetation looked dead or dying; grass, trees, plants. Nothing looked vibrant and thriving. Apak noticed the skeletons before Mando.  
“Look at that,” he said in shock. There were bones of various creatures lying everywhere. Some close together as if in a herd, and some by themselves in the middle of large patches of dead pastures and clearings. They flew over what looked to be dried up riverbeds and lakes. There was no color to anything. All they could see was brown and gray for miles and miles.  
“Is this what you meant by ominous?” he asked the Mandalorian.  
“Yes,” he replied. 

The mechanical skeletons of burned out starships and transports were what they flew over next. The garrison’s entire fleet looked to have been destroyed while it sat immobile in its shipyard. The wreckage seemed to be in perfect lines and rows, reflecting the organized discipline of an Imperial outpost.  
Djarin was vexed; what had happened here? “If those ships never left the planet, then where did everyone go? Are they still here?”  
“I really, really hope not,” Apak said with concern.  
Buildings finally came into view, but most of them looked destroyed, as well. As the ship passed over the main compound, only two structures looked to be intact: one main building, and one smaller bunker-type structure that flanked it on one side, about 30 meters away. They kept flying away from the compound, seeing more wreckage of vehicles and barren land, but no sign of human life, or any other life form.  
Djarin was extremely curious now.  
“Still no readings of life forms anywhere. It’s like nothing’s ever lived here,” he said, thinking out loud.  
“I’m turning us around. We’re not here to solve a mystery. Let’s get back to the compound, check the buildings that haven’t been blown into oblivion, and salvage and take whatever we find.”  
The Sentinel was turned around and flown back to the main building, and from this vantage point, they could see an Imperial ship, dilapidated but still intact, sitting behind it.  
“Is that a Lambda T4 shuttle? Do you think that works?” Apak wondered.  
“I doubt it. It looks like it hasn’t been flown in a long time.” Mando thought: Did he want to take the shuttle back, too?

They landed the ship in a bare piece of land that separated the main building and the smaller sub-units, which both Mando and Apak felt were too small to hold any sort of ship or vehicle, but would be perfect for Imperial munitions storage.  
“Do you smell that?” Apak asked. “It smells like the air is burning, but I don’t see any smoke or fire anywhere. Do you?”  
“No, I don’t smell anything.”  
“I guess it has to be pretty bad to get through that skull cap of yours. Alright, you check out the small one, and I’ll go over and look into the main building, okay?”  
“What if you can’t get into the structure?” he asked Apak.  
“Listen, I didn’t get this far in the galaxy by not being able to get into places. Just make sure to contact me when you’ve found anything.”  
He held up his comlink for emphasis, and walked away from the ship, toward the building. The Mandalorian looked over at the large, single-story structure, and now that he could get a better look at it from the ground, he noticed that it seemed to be constructed out of a material that looked new to him. However, it was an Imperial structure, so who knows what they had been making their buildings out of, he thought. He turned to look at the smaller unit that was closest to him, and lifted his Amban phaser-pulse blaster as he cautiously made his way toward its entrance. 

Apak made his way across the open field, and approached the front of the main structure slowly, blaster drawn. He could see old but noticeable blast marks covering most of the façade, as if it took heavy fire from something, but no major damage could be seen. He walked up to the entrance’s main doors, and was caught off guard when they suddenly slid open to either side of the walkway where he stood, and he instinctively ran to his right side, ducking behind a metal girder that jutted out from the building’s frame, and there he waited. After a few moments, when nothing happened, he peered out from behind his defilade, and looked into what seemed to be a dark hallway leading down into the middle of the building. Apak reached down to his belt, removed a small lamplight, and pointed into the darkness. When he saw that there was nothing but walls and a floor awaiting him inside, he proceeded into the structure. Immediately, he could smell a musty odor, but it wasn’t overwhelming to the point where he had to put a mask on, so he kept walking forward, and after a few more steps inside, the hallway’s lights seem to automatically turn on, illuminating the long stretch of walkway in front of him. He put the light away, relaxed a little, and continued heading down the hallway, hoping to find the main control room to the facility as soon as he could.

The Mandalorian also proceeded with caution toward the small storage unit, holding his pulse blaster in front of him and frequently glancing around the surrounding grounds, at the ready for any surprise that might suddenly come at him. Even though no life forms had been detected, he had his doubts about the place being completely desolate and abandoned. He arrived at the tall, single vertical door of the unit, and when it didn’t automatically open, he looked the side of the door and saw the control panel. Taking a couple tools out from his utility pouch, he leaned the pulse blaster up against the side of the structure, then opened the panel and cut a couple of wires, tied them together, pushed a button on the now-dangling in the air panel, and the door began to slowly rise. He looked around the perimeter again, waiting for the entrance to be clear, and it finally reached its peak and stopped. But before he could look in, he heard the noise of an approaching engine coming from somewhere away from the area. Then, he saw a landspeeder appear from being blocked by the structure he stood next to, and it pulled up to the entrance of the main building, exactly where Apak had entered. Mando took cover inside the doorway that had just opened, keeping his eyes on the bike, with his blaster held up and prepared for trouble. It wasn’t a person who climbed off of the bike, but a black RA-7 protocol droid, who picked a box up from the backseat of the speeder, and carried it into the building and out of sight. “I knew it,” he said out loud, lowering his gun into its holster, as he turned to look inside the small unit, and he froze where he stood at what was presented before him. A large pile of bodies – stormtrooper and Imperial command bodies – sat in the middle of the floor, rising to the top of the unit’s ceiling. Horrified, the Mandalorian took in the scene, observing what was left of the decayed figures, and the stench of death finally penetrating his helmet, forcing him to move away from the entrance and seek fresh air away from the unit. After collecting himself, and realizing the peril that might they both might be in, he rushed over to the main building, calling Apak on his comlink.  
“Apak? Get out, now! We’re not alone here! This place is not deserted, do you read me?! Apak??” There was no answer, nor was there a signal to be had from inside the structure, and the Mandalorian quickened his pace, blaster raised again.

The main hallway led Apak directly to the control room, which sat in the dark, as he walked into the middle of it, looking around for the switch panel to turn on the power. After a second, he walked back to the end of the hallway, and found it on the wall, and he flicked the lights and power on with click.  
“Well, that’s encouraging,” he muttered, looking over the control board that stretched from the left side of the room, curving along the entire wall, over to the right side. He took a few steps closer, reading the various descriptions of which switches controlled what in the compound, looking for any clue to where their quarry might be found. He placed his blaster down on the board’s counter and flicked a few switches with both hands, before taking out his communicator.  
“Mando, I’m in the control room and got the power on. What have you found?” he spoke into the comlink, hearing nothing back but static. “Mando?”  
With the confused preoccupation of waiting for an answer, he didn’t notice the two shadows that formed on the floor behind him, one taller than the other, but he did hear the low growl of something that caused him to drop the comlink, grab his blaster, then turn back around. At the same moment, the source of the growl – a four-legged beast called a volcrus – leapt up at him, knocking both the weapon and the man down to the ground, the blaster ending up too far out of reach for Apak to grab before the snarling, dual tusked and multi-fanged beast stood between him and the weapon. A tall human figure walked up behind the volcrus, dressed in tattered Alliance fatigues, and stared down at the intruder that they had just apprehended, with a stormtrooper’s blaster in hand and pointed at Apak. The volcrus stood pat, still growling and looking ready to pounce onto Apak at any moment.  
“He doesn’t like you,” the man said with a grin.

The Mandalorian sprinted to the entrance of the building, abruptly stopping as the main doors opened, and he slowly entered and proceeded down the well-lit hallway, the pulse blaster leading the way. He wasn’t worried about the droid; they were harmless, for the most part. It was who the droid was working for that was of deep concern. It brought back the box in the speeder for some reason, and someone had to have told it to retrieve it. The hallway led him deep into the structure, right to the control room, where he slowly entered to find Apak seated in a chair to his left, against the control board, arms bound behind his back. Standing next to him he saw the tall man, with Apak’s own blaster in one hand, pointed down at him, and a stormtrooper’s blaster in the other hand, pointed directly at the Mandalorian. At his feet, in front of Apak, was the volcrus, looking at the Mandalorian with all the menace of a hound from hell.  
“Greetings, Mandalorian. Welcome to Ve’sara. Please place your weapons on the floor, slowly, and take a seat in that chair over there.”  
He obliged, and sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the room from where they were situated. Just then, metal footsteps could be heard approaching the control room from the hallway, and the protocol droid walked into view. It stood there for a moment, peered around the room, then turned to the man.  
“What is your need, General Fray?”  
“Nothing right now, D5. Return to tending to the food you brought back from the field,” he said to it, keeping his eye on the Mandalorian the whole time.  
“As you wish, sir.” The droid exited the room and its footsteps faded down the echoes of the hallway.  
“We’re not here for a fight,” the Mandalorian explained.  
“Oh, I know why you’re here. Your partner already told me all about your ambitious yet shortsighted plan. And I’ll ask you as I asked him: Are there others coming?”  
“No, it’s just the two of us. That’s the truth.” He took a minute to observe the stranger.  
The tall, thin man looked as if he had survived a war that ended eons ago. He had a shaggy silver beard, black and silver hair down to his shoulders, and was wearing a rebel commander’s battle fatigues, albeit worn out, torn and filthy. However, he had strength in his voice, and stood in the room with a presence that suggested he had been through enough in his past that it gave him confidence in situations like the one they were currently in. The volcrus by his side helped, too. He had never seen one before, but knew that the value of their tusks was almost mythological.  
“I’ve seen the pile of bodies in the other building; what happened here? Who are you?” the Mandalorian asked.  
Hearing about the bodies, Apak suddenly became a bit more concerned with their plight, and wanted to speak up, but decided to remain silent. He wanted to hear the man’s answer. 

“I’m General Timathor Fray, commander of Grey Squadron of the rebel fleet. I led my pilots on the assault of the second Death Star, at the Battle of Endor, along with the rest of the Alliance. We had been told that our attack was a surprise. However, when we arrived, the entire Imperial fleet was waiting for us…it was a trap. We pulled out of hyperspace and they there they were; we had no choice but to engage them, waiting for our forces down on the moon’s surface to deactivate the space station’s energy shield so we could attack it. But the longer they took, the more ships we lost. We were completely outnumbered, and my ship’s guns and droid copilot were damaged early on in the fight. I had to watch helplessly as my entire squadron was picked off ship by ship by those Imperial bastards.” Fray told his story and never moved from his position, keeping the blasters raised and pointed at his visitors.  
“But the rebels won. You destroyed the Death Star and defeated both Vader and the Emperor at Endor,”Apak blurted out.  
“Not before I had to watch as my entire squadron was annihilated in front of my own eyes. Slaughtered in space, and there was nothing I could do to save them. After my ship was disabled, I had to retreat to the moon’s surface, just before the Death Star exploded. I met up with our ground forces, who had captured a squad of Imperial troops during the battle. I secretly took one of their commanders out of our camp, and proceeded to interrogate him myself. I made him tell me where other garrisons were stationed, away from the system. My anger and hatred controlled my actions, and he resisted at first, but after applying some duress, he finally told me about this place. I just wanted the name of a system, a destination. And he gave me one. I took a captured T4 shuttle and flew straight to this system. I didn’t care what was awaiting me here, how big the garrison was, or if any of the information I’d been given was true.  
“Imagine my surprise when I showed up here to find not only was he telling the truth, but the entire garrison was out in the open, preparing to abandon the outpost and meet up with more Imperials to prepare for their next battle. The Battle of Jakku, if I’m not mistaken. I now had my own surprise attack. I shot at everyone and destroyed just about everything. It was over in a matter of minutes. Commanders, troopers, droids…nothing survived. I finally landed and made my way into here, and found one general left alive, but not for long. And lastly, I came across the RA-7 droid that you just saw, and instinctively decided not to blast it into smithereens. When I discovered the garrison’s archives of its occupation here, I found out exactly what their short history on the planet consisted of: upon hearing that there were no kyber crystals here, they took it upon themselves to eradicate very living thing on the planet. They killed the colonists who had been here in solitude for centuries; they poisoned the water and air, and wiped out all of the indigenous life on the planet, before preparing to abandon it. There was one settlement a few clicks from here; they killed its residents and burned everything to the ground. They were going to just leave the whole planet like that, a lifeless system in the middle of empty space - who would know or say anything? That’s what the Empire did, if you’ve forgotten.  
“My T4 took a blast to its engine during my offensive, and now it’s unable to break atmosphere, which means I’ve been alone here ever since. Except for the droid, who I’ve renamed D5-O9 and reprogrammed to be more versatile, like being able to plant a garden and pilot a landspeeder.”  
“And the beast here? Where’d it come from?” Apak asked.  
“I found this volcrus while doing a reconnaissance of the other side of the planet, just wondering around, on the verge of death. I brought it back here and nourished it back to health with whatever I could, and it’s been my companion ever since.”  
“Are those tusks made of ivarine?”  
“100% pure ivarine. They’re the most valuable things left on this planet, if you can believe it. And on this planet is where they’re going to stay, scav.”  
“You haven’t had anyone else come out here, before us?” Mando asked.  
“I thought for sure, once the garrison wasn’t heard from after a while, the Empire would send a search squad out here, but they never did. Oh, and their weapons surplus you were expecting to find? I incinerated everything, so it looks like you wasted your time coming out here.” Apak couldn’t hide his frustration after hearing that news.  
“Of course you did,” he muttered.  
“That was quite a while ago.” Mando calmly tried to defuse the situation, but Apak had other ideas.  
“This guy’s crazy, Mando; don’t say anything to him, who knows what actually happened here.”  
Fray placed the blaster on the control counter next to him, and grabbed Apak by his jacket with his free hand.  
“Crazy? That’s a brilliant perception, scavenger slime. How would you feel if you saw your squadron – your friends, your family – put to death in front you, and there was nothing you could do to stop it?! How would you feel, rat!?! And what would you do to avenge their sacrifices?”  
“We all lost something in the war. You weren’t the only one hurting.”  
Fray got closer to Apak.  
“And what did you do about it? Crawl down into the cracks of some Outer Rim slum, to hide for a while until it was safe to come out and find whomever you could to use, to take advantage of until the next victim came along?”  
Apak retorts. “You…murdered…”  
“Murdered-“ Fray laughed, as he let go of the jacket.  
“…all of these people.”  
“I EXECUTED THEM! I gave them the justice they deserved, with the guilt of all of the Empire’s atrocities as my warrant!”  
Fray, really wound up now, turned to the Mandalorian and continued his posturing defense, taking a few steps over to him.  
“Surely, Mandalorian, a person of your moral ambiguity can empathize with my actions? No doubt you came all the way out here willing to take a life or two in order to get away with whatever prize you found…I know he did!” He pointed over to Apak, who never took his eyes off of Fray, and he now had his back to the bound prisoner.  
“Do you have any remorse for your actions, General?” Mando calmly asked. “Would your squadron have wanted you to do what you did?”  
“Remorse?” He paused to reflect on the word. “Did they have any remorse for destroying Alderaan? Hmm? You see, Mandalorian, that’s all I need to say to defend my actions.” 

Apak now saw his chance to get free. He slowly twisted his thumb and wrist in the same way he had shown the Mandalorian on Nevarro, knowing he could easily get free of the binders once that was done. And as before, the action caused a subtle click sound that Fray didn’t hear, but the volcrus did. The beast, sitting in front of Apak but looking at the Mandalorian, heard the sound and slowly turned its head to look at Apak. Their eyes met, and the sweat started to bead on Apak’s forehead, while the volcrus’ teeth gleamed from the clear saliva that was now dripping from its fangs, down to the floor, as a low menacing growl poured from its throat.  
Apak quickly slid his left hand through the binder ring, and lunged for his blaster. Grabbing it off of the counter, he turned to see the volcrus leaping at him, and he shot the blaster directly at it, hitting its torso, and it collapsed to the ground at Apak’s feet.  
“No!” screamed Fray, turning and shooting at Apak, hitting him in the upper chest, as Apak continued to shoot randomly in their direction, hitting Fray in the middle of his chest, while also hitting the Mandalorian in a piece of armor covering his left shoulder, ricocheting off of it and landing on the wall behind him. He deftly took Fray’s weapon out of his hand and shot back at Apak, hitting him in his lower abdomen and he slumped down into his chair, groaning in pain, his blaster dropping to the floor next to the volcrus. The Mandalorian rushed over and kicked it away from him, then turned back to see Fray, propped up against the wall, holding his hands over his fatal wound. He slid down the wall, reaching out to the bounty hunter, who eased him to the floor. Fray’s face was pale, sweating profusely, with blood dripping out of his mouth. He was trying to speak and was grasping for air at the same time. The Mandalorian kept him upright, holding his shoulders level, trying to calm him.  
“It’s ok, it’s ok. It’s over. Just relax.”  
Fray caught his breath, and grabbed Djarin’s arm, looking directly at him and seeing his battered reflection in the helmet.  
“I killed them…all of them. What have I done, here, Mandalorian? What have I done?” He could hear the panic, guilt and regret now in Fray’s voice, as he could see them in the man’s eyes, while tears streamed down his face.  
“You did what you had to do, General,” he assured him.  
“I did. I did.” Fray nodded his head, randomly looked around the room, then gathered his breath, looked at Djarin again and quietly stated, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” After a few short breaths, he exhaled for the last time and became still. 

He rested Fray’s arms in his lap, and slowly turned to face Apak. He was crumbled back in his chair, trying to tend to his wounds and catch his own breath, groaning in pain. The Mandalorian placed Fray’s blaster down next to him, and walked over to Apak, who began to chuckle.  
“Well, Mando, looks like you’re gonna be stuck here for a while. The T4 is toast, and you need two people to fly the Sentinel. So, I guess you’re all out of options. Maybe you can learn how to plant a garden, too.” Apak laughed hard at that thought, coughing and wincing in agony.  
At that moment, D5-O9 walked into the room, assessed the situation, and then looked at Djarin.  
“What is your need, Mandalorian?”  
“You were saying,” he replied to Apak, who stopped laughing, with his mouth agape.  
He walked past the droid, giving it the two men’s blasters, picked up his own and the pulse rifle, and began to leave. “Come with me,” he said to the droid, as he walked out of the room. The droid looked down at Apak, and then turned to leave, as Djarin yelled back to him from down the hallway, “Turn off the lights, when you leave, D5,” and the droid complied, leaving Apak to his mortality, in the dark.

The Mandalorian and the droid sealed the main compound, walked back over to the Sentinel, and gathered in the cockpit. With a few instructions and commands, the droid took over his inherited copilot duties, and they lifted off, leaving the isolated planet behind. Djarin set the coordinates as D5 flew them through the atmosphere and out of the system, and they prepared to jump into hyperspace, back to Nevarro. But Jakku ironically crossed his mind, as well; he probably could get a good price for the droid on the black market, and perhaps Unkar Plutt at Niima Outpost could assist with that, so maybe this trip wouldn’t be a complete loss.


End file.
